Archive - January 2016

Thirty years ago yesterday, the 27th of January, 1986, I was a 9-year old boy sitting on the shores of the Banana River at Cape Canaveral excited to see my first ever space shuttle launch. During this time of our lives, when...

While I was on Chios volunteering, the rest of the refugee route was shrouded in a veil of mystery. You would hear rumors about what was happening in different places. There is definitely news on the refugee crisis, but...

I arrived on Chios, Greece as an independent volunteer almost completely ignorant of what was being done there, what the needs were (besides beach duty, which I was reading about in the press) and who was working there. I was...

I don’t believe there is anything brilliant or earth-shattering in what I’ve learned from my experience volunteering on Chios. In many ways, it wasn’t what I learned, but what I remembered or realized for the umpteenth time...

For many years now, I’ve always said that home is where I sleep since I’ve been lacking anything close to permanent for a very long time. Even if I’m staying somewhere, a hotel or with friends, for a day or two, I will...

My last day of work is in the books and I honestly have not had time to think about it yet. That will be for another day and for another post.
I finished spending all the GoFundMe campaign contributions. All the purchases have...

Yesterday, I wrote about the images that have struck me since my time on Chios. I now will continue with Part II.
The actor
There was one night about two weeks ago when I helped serve food outside of Souda, the post-registration...

My time is winding down here on Chios. Tomorrow is my last day of “work.” Friday, I’m going to go to Çesme, Turkey for the day to check out what things are like on that side of the strait. On Saturday, I fly to Athens. I...

I was folding clothes in the boutique a week or so ago when a question came to my mind to ask a friend who was in there with me: “What do you consider the hardest piece of clothing to fold?”
“Unbuttoned...

Update (12 March 2016): Even though I stopped blogging some time ago about my experience on Chios, as I stopped volunteering in January, this page still gets a lot of traffic, because of people seeking volunteering opportunities...